Now Showing | ‘Contemplating the Void’ at the Guggenheim

Kristopher McKayMVRDV sees the Guggenheim’s rotunda as natural for bungee-jumping.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim, with its seemingly endless spiral ramp and its relatively minuscule galleries, has long been the museum that artists, curators and visitors (particularly those in high heels) loved to hate. Most of the prime real estate in the place is consumed by a central rotunda — or, in other words, dead space.

So when Nancy Spector, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator, and David van der Leer, the assistant curator for art and design, invited more than 200 creative types — from the artist Doug Aitken to the architect Zaha Hadid — to suggest ways in which to fill that enormous doughnut hole, they all jumped at the chance, some quite literally. “Connect the edges of the second ring through the use of a transparent, elastic membrane capable to respect and emphasize the most radical spring of Manhattan,” exclaimed the Dutch architecture firm MVRDV. Translation: bungee jumping!

This far-flung proposal and many, many more will be on display Feb. 12 to April 28, as “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.” (Almost all of them will also be sold at a silent auction on March 4; proceeds will support the museum’s programming.) While the show’s title may sound like a grim invitation to stare mortality in the face, many of the contributors approached the exercise with nothing short of glee.

Kristopher McKayGregg Lynn envisions the space as a home for his Liquid Plastic Robot (left). Olson Kundig Architects’ post-apocalyptic concept turns the entire museum into an open-air market for local growers.

The architectural designer Greg Lynn, who has been successfully experimenting with roto-molded plastic kids’ toys, “upcycling” them into furniture, imagined the rotunda as a new home for a giant Liquid Plastic Robot. His dynamic sculpture, made from industrial objects like water tanks, waste tanks and kayaks, was inspired, he said, by the Cirque de Soleil’s robotic stages, the Statue of Liberty and a legendary proposal for a walking sculpture of Lenin, with moving arms and legs, which was meant to be taller than a skyscraper.

Olson Kundig Architects envisioned not just the rotunda but the entire museum sitting empty in a post-apocalyptic future, only 50 years away. By 2060, Central Park has been cultivated by local growers who, on the weekends, set up a vast open-air market on the Guggenheim’s ramp. According to the proposal, “The uppermost portion of the oculus has been removed due to hail damage and large expanses that used to be glazing are now traversed by free-roaming livestock and citizens alike.” The rotunda is taken over by a giant treelike structure that is in fact a windmill, “its giant steel branches connecting each floor to the composter and filling the large void with life yet again.”